Thanks to ACA, rural hospitals closing their doors.

[g5000]

ObamaCare was advertised as legislation which would reduce the per capita cost of health care in America. That was the bait.

In this, it has utterly failed.

What ObamaCare actually achieves is the redistribution of those costs, largely from the unproductive members of our society onto the backs of the productive members of our society. That was the switch.

One third of the "involuntarily insured" in America are high school dropouts. These are the people whose costs are being redistributed to the more productive members of our society.

In one of the most Orwellian turns in the history of American political debate, the supporters of ObamaCare have attempted to portray those who will have to cough up their money in order to support the high school dropouts as "freeloaders".

The insurance mandate is critical to the survival of ObamaCare. The insurance mandate is the means by which productive people are forced to overpay in order to pay for the insurance of high school dropouts. This is the redistribution of cost under ObamaCare.

ObamaCare was a classic "bait-and-switch" con job.

Well, that's your opinion, anyway.

No, it is the reality.

 

[Plasmaball]

Nonsense.

thats because you are a moron.
you cant complain about something you opt out of.
and you didnt predict shit

 

[koshergrl]

"The Obama administration anticipated that cuts in subsidies for treating large numbers of people who can’t pay for medical care would be balanced by more low-income patients being covered by Medicaid. A U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year allowed states to decide whether to expand Medicaid to individuals making as much as 133 percent of the federal poverty level. Half have said they would.

The hospital closures and service reductions are a setback for President Barack Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act."

"Joanne Peters, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, said governors who chose not to expand Medicaid are to blame for the hospital closures."

Obamacare Cutbacks Shut Hospitals Where Medicaid Went Unexpanded - Bloomberg

The states that can't afford to INCREASE Medicaid are penalized. They are the poorest states, and the people who are punished are the poorest people.

People that progs think should die quickly, and without making a sound.

 

[Plasmaball]

The closest hospital where my last child was born closed in 2005 and reopened in 2012...it is only 13 miles down the road...

Gee, thanks for the update. Jesus, where the hell do you live.. 13 miles to the nearest hospital? I have two majors and God only knows how many urgent care clinics within 5.

I recently lived in one of the poorest counties in the state, where the nearest hospital was 200 miles away.

no you didnt

 

[g5000]

Obamacare Cutbacks Shut Hospitals Where Medicaid Went Unexpanded - Bloomberg

You should ask yourself what color those state are where Medicaid went unexpanded.

Georgia, you say? Hmmmm...

 

[koshergrl]

The poorest states. So of course they are not important. They're also the blackest states...which makes them even less important to progs.

"Due to the ACA, there will be a shortage of physicians which will lead to physicians leaving rural areas for more densely populated centers, further damaging the quality of healthcare in rural and underpopulated areas."

Not So Affordable Health Care The Patient Protection Affordable Care Act Medium

 

[koshergrl]

"One of the ways that Obamacare has negatively impacted these hospitals is in imposing additional and costly record keeping requirements that have placed a financial strain on these hospitals, which typically hang on to financial solvency by a shoestring to begin with. Another and more significant way, however, is through the act’s “readmission penalties,” under which hospitals are penalized for readmitting too many Medicare patients within a 30 day window. These penalties disproportionately hit rural hospitals, which serve poorer and less well educated healthcare consumers, and consumers who are less likely to have a regular primary care physician. As a result, through no fault of their own, they are more likely to see repeat patients, especially those who are noncompliant with discharge instructions for outpatient followup care. The readmission penalties were intended to improve quality of care, but instead they end up systematically financially crippling rural hospitals."

Obamacare s Decimation of Rural Hospitals RedState

 

[sameech]

The closing of the rural hospitals is not entirely because of the ACA. And it isn't possible to draw that conclusion from the OP link unless one is extremely selective in one's vision.

Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement cuts are actually an ongoing part of the Republican budget in the 90s that supposedly were going to balance the budget. But ever since then, Congress has had to enact several "doc fix" bills to avoid those cuts.

The ACA is culpable in this situation in that it requires medical facilities to modernize. Electronic medical records and things of that nature. This is an expense out of reach of those hospitals who mostly provide service to Medicaid/Medicare patients.

It's a double whammy. If you serve mostly Medicaid/Medicare patients, you are already on a razor's edge because of the drive to reduce Medicaid/Medicare reimbursements, and then you are required to modernize under the ACA.

Not entirely because of the PPCA, but it is more complicated than having computerized record keeping. Very small hospitals can get 100% reimbursement, but if you go over a certain number of beds (25 I think), then every patient is treated at a loss. The PPACA also diverted funding away from subsidizing indigent treatment, so they no longer get a check for people who come in uninsured. They also just do not have the volume of insured patients to absorb the losses on no insurance/medicaid/medicare if they have more than the bed cliff.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

ObamaCare was advertised as legislation which would reduce the per capita cost of health care in America. That was the bait.

In this, it has utterly failed.

What ObamaCare actually achieves is the redistribution of those costs, largely from the unproductive members of our society onto the backs of the productive members of our society. That was the switch.

One third of the "involuntarily insured" in America are high school dropouts. These are the people whose costs are being redistributed to the more productive members of our society.

In one of the most Orwellian turns in the history of American political debate, the supporters of ObamaCare have attempted to portray those who will have to cough up their money in order to support the high school dropouts as "freeloaders".

The insurance mandate is critical to the survival of ObamaCare. The insurance mandate is the means by which productive people are forced to overpay in order to pay for the insurance of high school dropouts. This is the redistribution of cost under ObamaCare.

ObamaCare was a classic "bait-and-switch" con job.

yep....a total scam.....but we on the right knew that from the start....

the mandate should be determined to be unconstitutional....at least we can still hope....

all these hospitals depend on medicaid/medicare funding......note that BO stole HALF A TRILLION from Medicare for his ACA plan.......meanwhile the costs continue to go up....of course he wants the states to come up with the money for medicaid expansion.....meanwhile he gets to dictate medical policy and requirements through his ACA plan....what a frikken scam...

 

[koshergrl]

ObamaCare was advertised as legislation which would reduce the per capita cost of health care in America. That was the bait.

In this, it has utterly failed.

What ObamaCare actually achieves is the redistribution of those costs, largely from the unproductive members of our society onto the backs of the productive members of our society. That was the switch.

One third of the "involuntarily insured" in America are high school dropouts. These are the people whose costs are being redistributed to the more productive members of our society.

In one of the most Orwellian turns in the history of American political debate, the supporters of ObamaCare have attempted to portray those who will have to cough up their money in order to support the high school dropouts as "freeloaders".

The insurance mandate is critical to the survival of ObamaCare. The insurance mandate is the means by which productive people are forced to overpay in order to pay for the insurance of high school dropouts. This is the redistribution of cost under ObamaCare.

ObamaCare was a classic "bait-and-switch" con job.

yep....a total scam.....but we on the right knew that from the start....

the mandate should be determined to be unconstitutional....at least we can still hope....

all these hospitals depend on medicaid/medicare funding......note that BO stole HALF A TRILLION from Medicare for his ACA plan.......meanwhile the costs continue to go up....of course he wants the states to come up with the money for medicaid expansion.....meanwhile he gets to dictate medical policy and requirements through his ACA plan....what a frikken scam...

Exactly.

 

[koshergrl]

"Dismemberment of the U.S. hospital system is on course as Obamacare and its prime author, Dr. "EZ Kill" Ezekiel Emanuel, prescribe. Already, in 2013 nearly 60,000 hospital workers were laid off, and now in just the first three months of 2014 another 7,500 hospital jobs have been slashed across the country, while 4,000 hospital workers in Chattanooga, Tennessee have a freeze on sick leave and time off pay. In each instance the cut in reimbursements to hospitals under Obamacare was cited as a core cause for the layoffs.

"Hospital closures are also hitting, especially in rural areas. Just as Obama's hatchet man Dr. "EZ Kill" declaimed on Feb. 24, "We don't need 5,000 hospitals," hospitals and/or their units, such as trauma centers, emergency rooms, and labor & delivery rooms, are being shuttered."

Dr. EZ Kill, lol....

ObamaCare is Death Knell for U.S. Hospitals

 

[longknife]

Obamacare’s Decimation of Rural Hospitals

Nobody outside conservative websites seem to be paying attention to this piece. One of the people interviewed says that “stand alone hospitals” are becoming extinct.


The article contains a graphic I can't get to link here that shows the locations of hospitals shut down due to Obamacare.


This is not a short filler fluff piece but a rather extensive overview of the situation. Do your grandparents live in a small town where they might not be able to get good medical care because the local hospital is closed.


Read the full article @ http://www.usatoday.com/longform/ne...71/?AID=10709313&PID=6157504&SID=ckhvicn4bpg3

 

[NYcarbineer]

The number of hospitals in the US has been falling since the 1970's

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/2011/116.pdf

 

[NYcarbineer]

The unintended point this thread makes is that hospital availability, or the lack of it, is one big fat dealbreaker for the conservative notion that competition in the marketplace is some sort of savior for healthcare and its rising costs.

 

[koshergrl]

They aren't paying attention because this has been the intent ALL ALONG. Just like the msm isn't paying any attention to the fact that Gruber admitted the ACA was deliberately skewed in order to confuse stupid people.

They know what they're doing, just as we have said all along. The intent is, indeed, to hurt people.

 

[Mustang]

I predicted this:

"Since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals — with a total of more than 1,500 beds — have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The pace of closures has quickened: from 3 in 2010 to 13 in 2013, and 12 already this year. Georgia alone has lost five rural hospitals since 2012, and at least six more are teetering on the brink of collapse. Each of the state's closed hospitals served about 10,000 people — a lot for remaining area hospitals to absorb."

"These hospitals treat some of the sickest and poorest patients — those least aware of how to stay healthy. Hospital officials contend that the law's penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they're released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden."

"Low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements hurt these hospitals more than others because it's how most of their patients are insured, if they are at all. Here in Stewart County, it's a problem that expanding Medicaid to all of the poorest patients -– which the ACA intended but 23 states including Georgia have not done, according to the federal government — would help, but wouldn't solve.

"They set the whole rural system up for failure," says Jimmy Lewis, CEO of Hometown Health, an association representing rural hospitals in Georgia and Alabama, believed to be the next state facing mass closures. "Through entitlements and a mandate to provide service without regard to condition, they got us to (the highest reimbursements), and now they're pulling the rug out from under us."

Rural hospitals in critical condition

While I have little doubt that hospitals have closed, I SERIOUSLY doubt that the ACA is the sole reason, or even the main reason, or perhaps even had anything to do at all with the reason why any or all of these hospitals have closed.

For one thing, hospitals close for a myriad of reasons. One reason is that they're old, and antiquated, and even because they're just plain dirty and have outlived their useful life. In such cases, new hospitals are built. Or perhaps a new hospital is built in a more central location where they can serve a population distribution that may be considerably different than when the other hospital was opened. Or one larger hospital may replace two older hospitals. Or a new hospital is built by a new healthcare organization that didn't even exist a couple of decades ago.

Whatever the reason or reasons are that specific hospitals close, I also have absolutely no doubt that some partisans will accuse the ACA in much the same way that Obama was blamed when antiquated coal-fired powered plants were eventually closed in favor of building newer and cleaner operating plants after those old plants had been repeatedly reauthorized to operate for decades past their originally planned operational life.

Frankly, this is old. It's like blaming every cancelled healthcare policy on the ACA when there was already a very high probability that people might be forced to choose a new policy prior to the beginning of every year under the system that existed prior to the ACA passing.

 

[koshergrl]

It doesn't matter what you believe, brain dead obamite.

The educated, knowledgeable world knows exactly what is going on.

I take it you were one of the "stupid" Americans Gruber is so proud of duping.

Obamacare architect discussed misleading public - CNN.com

 

[NYcarbineer]

208 rural hospitals closed in the 1990's.

https://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-04-02-00610.pdf

 

[NYcarbineer]

252 rural hospitals closed in the 1980's

http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/91-cbo-037.pdf

 

[ScreamingEagle]

I predicted this:

"Since the beginning of 2010, 43 rural hospitals — with a total of more than 1,500 beds — have closed, according to data from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. The pace of closures has quickened: from 3 in 2010 to 13 in 2013, and 12 already this year. Georgia alone has lost five rural hospitals since 2012, and at least six more are teetering on the brink of collapse. Each of the state's closed hospitals served about 10,000 people — a lot for remaining area hospitals to absorb."

"These hospitals treat some of the sickest and poorest patients — those least aware of how to stay healthy. Hospital officials contend that the law's penalties for having to re-admit patients soon after they're released are impossible to avoid and create a crushing burden."

"Low Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements hurt these hospitals more than others because it's how most of their patients are insured, if they are at all. Here in Stewart County, it's a problem that expanding Medicaid to all of the poorest patients -– which the ACA intended but 23 states including Georgia have not done, according to the federal government — would help, but wouldn't solve.

"They set the whole rural system up for failure," says Jimmy Lewis, CEO of Hometown Health, an association representing rural hospitals in Georgia and Alabama, believed to be the next state facing mass closures. "Through entitlements and a mandate to provide service without regard to condition, they got us to (the highest reimbursements), and now they're pulling the rug out from under us."

Rural hospitals in critical condition

While I have little doubt that hospitals have closed, I SERIOUSLY doubt that the ACA is the sole reason, or even the main reason, or perhaps even had anything to do at all with the reason why any or all of these hospitals have closed.

For one thing, hospitals close for a myriad of reasons. One reason is that they're old, and antiquated, and even because they're just plain dirty and have outlived their useful life. In such cases, new hospitals are built. Or perhaps a new hospital is built in a more central location where they can serve a population distribution that may be considerably different than when the other hospital was opened. Or one larger hospital may replace two older hospitals. Or a new hospital is built by a new healthcare organization that didn't even exist a couple of decades ago.

Whatever the reason or reasons are that specific hospitals close, I also have absolutely no doubt that some partisans will accuse the ACA in much the same way that Obama was blamed when antiquated coal-fired powered plants were eventually closed in favor of building newer and cleaner operating plants after those old plants had been repeatedly reauthorized to operate for decades past their originally planned operational life.

Frankly, this is old. It's like blaming every cancelled healthcare policy on the ACA when there was already a very high probability that people might be forced to choose a new policy prior to the beginning of every year under the system that existed prior to the ACA passing.

so why isn't that wunnerful ACA helping these hospitals survive in order to give access to good healthcare to EVERYONE.....like Obama said....?